Piezoelectric nano-positioners typically include piezoelectric elements that respond to electric pulses or fields by making a series of stretches and position holds (sticks) and contractions (slips) to drive a driven member in an incremental stepping or “stick-slip” manner. Linear piezoelectric nano-positioners are used in a wide variety of devices, for example, scanning probe microscopes (SPMs) used in the nanotechnology field. Scientists use SPMs to reveal data about various properties of materials, such as gold or silicon, at very fine resolution, down to molecules and atoms of the materials. SPMs are a family of ultra-high magnification instruments that include Scanning Tunneling Microscopes (STMs), Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs), Near Field Scanning Optical Microscopes (NSOMs), among others. SPMs typically include piezoelectric nano-positioners that move physical probes with sufficient precision to provide ultra-high resolution on the nanometer scale and below.
But SPMs usually include a plurality of bulky piezoelectric nano-positioners that are separate for each of three X, Y, and Z machine axes and are distributed in different locations throughout the machine. Also, for many applications existing piezoelectric nano-positioners are not sufficiently rigid, or exhibit undesirable magnetic properties.